Condi Tortures The Truth, Europe Pretends To Believe Her

Mistress Condi could be forgiven for reading coverage of her trip to Europe and feeling very pleased with herself.In the main, the media are reporting that European leaders are "satisfied" with her explanation on the issue of alleged secret CIA prisons overseas and torture by and on behalf of America.

But those who take such statements by European leaders at face value don't really understand the word "diplomatic" - Condi has, in fact, handed them enough rope to diplomatically hang the Bush administration on high at a later date. A look at the full text of her statement will show how - by the use of key phrases that will be shown to be incompatible with the truth followed by much rueful smiling, head shaking and talk of the respect for truth that allies should show one another. Europe knows how to play this particular game very well.

Already, the cracks in Mistress Rice's statement are showing. For instance, the admission that the Red Cross are not permitted access to all detainees held by the U.S.

The state department's top legal adviser, John Bellinger, made the admission...He stated that the group International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had access to "absolutely everybody" at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which holds suspects detained during the US war on terror.

When asked by journalists if the organisation had access to everybody held in similar circumstances elsewhere, he said: "No". He declined to explain further.

Until now the administration has always said that the International Red Cross has access to all prisoners held at US defence department facilities - leaving open the question of whether there are CIA prisons elsewhere. Not allowing access by the Red Cross, which is specifically named in the Geneva Convention as it relates to both Prisoners of War and to civilians in time of war, treads pretty close to breaking said Convention without actually doing so and will not sit well with foreign powers. Secretary Rice has said "With respect to detainees, the United States government complies with its constitution, its laws, and its treaty obligations" but this takes that compiance right up to the edge of the letter, rather than the spirit, of the law.

Then there's the problems with Condi's statement that The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured. You see, many of the countries to which the US has rendered detaines have major histories of torture:

According to the US, Jordan uses beatings, sleep deprivation and extended solitary confinement.

Human Rights Watch accused Algeria of beatings, burnings, electrical shocks and sexual assault.

It also accuses Egypt of keeping detainees stripped, blindfolded and strung up.

It says that Morocco uses the same, as well as sleep deprivation, verbal intimidation, sexual assault and threats to the families of detainees.

Amnesty International claims that Lebanon has a record of torture and deaths in custody.

Britain has been already been forced to part company with the Bush administration by its Law Lords, who have ruled that evidence which may have been obtained by torture is inadmissable. Lord Bingham said: “The English common law has regarded torture and its fruits with abhorrence for over 500 years and that abhorrence is now shared by over 140 countries which have acceded to the torture convention."

Or how about the gaping hole contained in Rice's description of rendition?

In some situations a terrorist suspect can be extradited according to traditional judicial procedures. But there have long been many other cases where, for some reason, the local government cannot detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition is not a good option.

In those cases the local government can make the sovereign choice to co-operate in a rendition. Such renditions are permissible under international law and are consistent with the responsibilities of those governments to protect their citizens.

You see, that strongly suggests that rendition, as allowed by international law, is a once off and one direction process. When used by the US that is clearly not the case. There are several documented cases of detainess being flown to different countries for interrogation only to be returned to the USA (or Gitmo, which is a famous quibble on the use of the concept of extra-territoriality). The question must then be raised - why make a rendition if the USA was obviously capable all along of detaining and prosecuting the suspect? The obvious answer is to sidestep American law and have those detainees tortured abroad.

The German who is suing the CIA, Khalid El-Masri, is one such detainee. He was kidnapped by the CIA from Macedonia, bundled onto a plane and taken off to a prison many hours away. Several months later, after allegedly being tortured, he was flown back and dropped in Albania. Another is Binyam Mohammed. The Pentagon alleges that he plotted to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in America and received instructions from Al-Qaeda’s senior leaders, including the architect of the 9/11 attacks. He is currently detained at Gitmo, but his lawyers claim the allegations against Mohammed are based on a confession extracted through torture in a Moroccan jail.

In both cases, flight records for planes with known CIA connections corroberate the stories - as do records obtained by investigators from scores of European planespotting hobbyists.

Then there's the case of Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmad. Here is another detainee who was rendered only to be brought back to Gitmo later and in his case the reason seems clear - according to a classified Pentagon memo cited in the case it was so that he could be tortured.

The March 17, 2004, Defense Department memo indicated that American officials were frustrated in trying to obtain information from Ahmad, according to the description of the classified memo in the court petition. The officials suggested sending Ahmad to an unspecified foreign country that employed torture in order to increase chances of extracting information from him, according to the petition's description of the memo.

Neither U.S. government lawyers or by U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, who read the actual Pentagon document have disputed this description of the memo.

Reports that the Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment will also not have helped Condi's credibility. Neither will the knowledge that this administration has always tried to slip between the cracks of self-proclaimed definitions on what constitutes "torture" or how exactly international or American law applies to CIA and other operatives overseas. British MP Chris Mullen exactly captured the European mood when he wrote in the LA Times that if cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment isn't being applied, then what's it all about? Why has this vast, secret web been constructed, if not to ensure that whatever is happening takes place beyond the reach of U.S. law?

Furthermore, it may have escaped the American medias attention entirely, but Europeans took careful note when Naomi Klein pointed out that George Bush took to the stage to make his famous "We do not torture" declaration in downtown Panama City - an hour and a half's drive from the former site of the notorious "School of the Americas". Its a clear reminder of what Americans - from the antiwar Left to Senator John McCain - have been doing their very best to forget, namely that America has always tortured. What is different now is that outsourcing and practises by actual American agents have become intermingled. The guise of "plausible deniability" has gone.

Which is why even the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times of London has an editorial today which says that America tortures, no matter what Ms. Rice may say, and that this is a betrayal of all the founding fathers stood for. Meanwhile, European leaders take note, while smiling diplomatically.